Mormons Expel Founder of Group Seeking Priesthood for Women

Kate Kelly, who organized the group Ordain Women, with her husband in Salt Lake City. She was excommunicated on Monday.

Jim McAuley for The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

June 23, 2014

Kate Kelly, who unsettled the Mormon Church by founding a movement to advocate opening the male-only priesthood to women, was excommunicated by her bishop and his two counselors in Virginia on Monday.

Ms. Kelly, who once served as a Mormon missionary in Spain, organized the group Ordain Women in 2013 and quickly became the face of a new feminist uprising in the church. She gained national attention by leading demonstrations at the church’s semiannual conferences at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, lining up with Mormon women of all ages outside priesthood meetings, aware that they would be barred from entering.

“I am not an apostate, unless every single person who has questions to ask out loud is an apostate,” Ms. Kelly said in a telephone interview on Sunday, just before her disciplinary council met. “I am a faithful, active Mormon woman who has never spoken anything against the leaders of the church, and that’s not my definition of an apostate.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon Church is formally known, depends on women to hold many leadership roles throughout the church. But the Mormon priesthood, which is made up of laymen who are ordained as early as the age of 12, is closed to women because, the church says, Jesus had only male apostles.

Bishop Mark Harrison informed Ms. Kelly by email that she had been excommunicated “for conduct contrary to the laws and order of the church,” according to a partial text of the decision shared by an Ordain Women spokeswoman.

The bishop said in the email that Ms. Kelly may not take the sacrament, hold a voluntary position or give a talk in the church; vote for church offices; contribute tithes; or wear the sacred Mormon undergarments.

To be considered for readmission to the church, “you will need to demonstrate over a period of time that you have stopped teachings and actions that undermine the church, its leaders and the doctrine of the priesthood,” the email to Ms. Kelly said. “You must stop trying to gain a following for yourself or your cause and taking actions that could lead others away from the church.”

The Mormon Church’s public affairs office declined to comment further.

Ms. Kelly, 33, is among the largest wave of Mormons to face excommunication since 1993, when the church disciplined half a dozen dissident intellectuals known as the “September Six.”

John P. Dehlin, the founder of Mormon Stories, a website for those questioning their faith, received notice of his excommunication hearing the day before Ms. Kelly.

But his bishop in Utah postponed his hearing until they could meet this month, saying he hoped to de-escalate the conflict, Mr. Dehlin said.

The Mormon Church says that all disciplinary actions are begun and conducted by local leaders. But it has acknowledged that the local leaders received guidance from more senior church authorities in training sessions where they have discussed concerns about members who are promoting women’s ordination and gay rights.

Ms. Kelly, a human rights lawyer, said she was put on notice in May that she faced consequences if she did not take down the Ordain Women website and disaffiliate from the group. She refused. On June 8, after she had moved to Utah, she received an email from her former bishop in Virginia, Bishop Harrison, notifying her that she was charged with apostasy and faced excommunication by a disciplinary council.

She chose not to attend the hearing or to participate by Skype from church headquarters in Salt Lake City because, she said, she was told she must be alone in the room.

She sent a letter to the disciplinary council with pictures from childhood to marriage testifying to her love for her faith, and begging the judges to “allow me to continue to worship in peace.”

Mormons believe that excommunication breaks the eternal ties to one’s spouse and other family members who were sealed together in temple rituals.

The church says that disciplinary hearings are loving correctives for bad behavior, and those who are excommunicated can return to the fold if they repent.

Ms. Kelly was attending a board meeting of Ordain Women, planned months ago, when she received the verdict on Monday, and said she sobbed so hard she could not finish reading it.

She plans to appeal, and bristled at the notion that church discipline is done out of love.

“That’s classic language of an abusive relationship, where a person abusing and hurting you says that they’re doing it out of love,” she said.

More than a thousand Mormons sent letters of support for Ms. Kelly to the bishop and two of his counselors considering her case in Oakton, Va. Hundreds turned out for a vigil in Salt Lake City while the hearing was underway, and smaller groups of supporters gathered at 50 sites in 17 countries, according to Ordain Women.

Chelsea Shields Strayer, a member of the executive board of Ordain Women, said, “You can get rid of Kate, but something else is going to crop up.”